The Other Mothers

The novel opens with a frame narrative set in April 2019. Tash Carpenter, a freelance journalist and mother, sits in a police interview room in Cornwall with blood on her sleeve. She begs the detective to search the cliffs for a man who fell. When asked how she knows the people involved, Tash explains they met at their children's playgroup.

The story shifts to London in late 2017, where a newspaper article by Tash (under her maiden name, Natasha James) reports on the death of Sophie Blake, a 21-year-old nanny found in the East Reservoir at Woodberry Wetlands in Hackney. An inquest concluded Sophie likely went wild swimming after drinking and sustained a head injury. The coroner recorded an open verdict.

In September 2018, Tash revisits the wetlands, guilty over her rushed coverage of the inquest. She discovers a memorial at a sluice gate that does not match the official account of where Sophie would have gone swimming. Days later, Sophie's mother, Jane Blake, appears at Tash's door, insists Sophie was murdered, and demands Tash investigate.

Running in alternation with Tash's present-day chapters are sections narrated by Sophie, told in past tense with countdown headings measuring the months before her death. Sophie, a young woman whose father died when she was 15, works at St Mark's playgroup, where she grows concerned about Jude, a withdrawn toddler whose excessively independent behavior suggests avoidant attachment. Jude's stepmother, later revealed to be Claire Henderson, hires Sophie as a live-in nanny at the family's Highbury home. Claire is pregnant and struggling to bond with Jude. Sophie is dazzled by the Hendersons' wealth, wearing Claire's cast-off designer clothes and borrowing a vintage Nikon camera from Claire's husband, Jez Henderson.

Meanwhile, Tash struggles to settle her toddler Finn into his new playgroup. Laura, a doctor who works at the same hospital as Tash's husband, Tom, befriends Tash and draws her into a circle of glamorous playgroup mothers: Nicole, a blunt American investment banker on maternity leave, and Claire Henderson. Another playgroup mother, Christina, a barrister and single mother of a daughter named Eliza, declines Tash's invitation to join the group, tensing visibly at the mention of Laura, Claire, and Nicole.

Tash's investigation and her social life with the mothers become deeply intertwined. She interviews the reservoir manager who found Sophie's body and learns details omitted from the inquest: Sophie was fully clothed, and there was nothing nearby she could have hit her head on. He gives Tash a phone dredged from the reservoir that Jane identifies as Sophie's. Recovered data shows urgent messages from the night Sophie disappeared, including warnings not to "use" something. At midnight, the phone was factory-reset.

Jane tells Tash that Sophie worked for a couple with two boys. When Tash matches Claire's mobile number to a message on Sophie's phone, she confirms Sophie was the Hendersons' nanny. At Claire's house during a play date, Tash discovers contraceptive pills prescribed to Sophie hidden in a bathroom drawer. Finn falls down the basement stairs and splits his lip. After consulting a child psychologist, Tash suspects Jude pushed Finn, and that Jude may be compulsively reenacting a trauma he witnessed: someone being pushed down stairs.

Sophie's chapters trace her deepening entanglement with the Henderson household. Jez teaches her photography in his darkroom, and their relationship turns sexual. Sal, a working-class childminder and Sophie's closest friend, warns her to be careful around Jez. After baby Beau is born, Claire has severe postpartum depression, refusing professional help out of terror that authorities will take her baby. Sophie carries more of the household burden while Claire retreats.

Tash begins receiving anonymous threatening texts. Her copywriting files are deleted from her laptop, replaced by a warning. Tom is suspended from the hospital after an anonymous complaint alleging he sexually assaulted a patient.

A police officer named Adam, who worked Sophie's original case but was overruled by his superior, secretly meets Tash and confirms he believed Sophie was murdered. He shows Tash the last CCTV image of Sophie alive, leaving a birthday party with a man's arm around her. Tash is horrified to recognize Tom. After she confronts him, Tom explains he was simply holding a door open for Sophie as she left with her pram.

Through her friend Grace, Tash learns that Ed Crawley, Laura's husband, was quietly fired from his investment bank after a colleague alleged Ed sexually assaulted her. Tash finds Ed on a dating app using a fake name. Sophie's chapters confirm the connection: Sophie went on a date with Ed that turned frightening when he tried to force her into a hotel room, and she escaped only because a stranger intervened.

Sophie discovers the secret that will cost her life: a DNA paternity test proving Jez is the biological father of Christina's daughter, Eliza. She confronts Claire with this revelation and her own affair with Jez. Claire, enraged, pushes Sophie at the top of the stairs. Sophie strikes her head and tumbles to the hallway floor. Jude witnesses the fall from the landing. Sophie is badly injured but alive.

Laura arrives and checks Sophie's pulse. She tells Claire and Jez that Sophie is dead, though Sophie is still breathing. Laura offers to orchestrate a cover-up in exchange for the financial rescue she and Ed desperately need. Once Jez and Claire leave the hallway, Laura smothers Sophie with her green pashmina.

Sal is found dead of an apparent overdose shortly before she can share what she knows with Tash. Christina tells Tash she does not believe Sal's death was self-inflicted. A concealed camera near Sal's flat later reveals Laura entering through the back patio on the day Sal died.

The group travels to the Hendersons' farmhouse in Cornwall for an Easter holiday. On a stormy night, Tash climbs the cliffs seeking phone signal and receives critical information from Adam: Ed's car was traced near the Hendersons' home and the wetlands the weekend Sophie died. Grace sends Tash photographs of the paternity test from Sal's estate. Laura confronts Tash on the cliffs and confesses her role in the cover-up. Jez, Claire, and Nicole emerge. Nicole reveals she sent the threatening messages and filed the false complaint against Tom. Jez lunges at Tash and strikes her face. As she pushes him away, the cliff edge crumbles beneath him and he falls to the rocks below.

All four women tell police that Jez lost his way in the storm. The investigation is dropped.

Four months later, Tash and Tom prepare to move to Oxford. Tash is pregnant. Tom examines Sophie's pathology report and notes that the head injury alone would not have killed Sophie, and that hemorrhages under her eyelid are consistent with smothering. Tash realizes Laura was the true killer: She told Claire and Jez that Sophie was already dead, then smothered the still-living Sophie, giving Laura permanent financial leverage over the Hendersons.

Christina summons Tash to her penthouse and presents the full case against Laura. Christina reveals she and Jez had been lovers since before his marriages, and Eliza is their daughter. She threatens to expose the paternity of Tash's unborn baby, conceived during a sexual encounter with Jez in Cornwall, unless Tash testifies that Laura pushed Jez off the cliffs. The novel ends with Tash facing an impossible choice: tell the truth about what happened, that she pushed Jez away knowing the cliff was crumbling beneath him, and destroy her family and freedom; or accept Christina's version, blame Laura, and live inside the lie. The final lines leave Tash's decision unresolved, as she reflects that what matters is not the truth but stories, and whose proves the most compelling.